New Apple Employees Work on Fake Products: Report

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Everybody knows that Apple is one of the most secretive companies when it comes to sharing what it's working on, but the newest revelation from Adam Lashinky's Inside Apple reveals that the company doesn't even trust the people it hires, until after they've been put in dummy roles and on dummy projects.

We've heard of Apple drilling holes in tables, then chaining iPad prototypes down with bike cables to them, taking photos of the wood grains in case pictures were leaked out, rooms with blackened windows and requiring newly installed door locks, but this is taking it to a whole new level of secrecy:

From Inside Apple:

For new recruits, the secret keeping begins even before they learn which of these building they'll be working in. Despite surviving multiple rounds of rigorous interviews, many employees are hired into so-called dummy positions, roles that aren't explained in detail until after they join the company. The new hires have been welcomed but not yet indoctrinated and aren't necessarily to be trusted with information as sensitive as their own mission. "They wouldn't tell me what it was," remembered a former engineer who had been a graduate student before joining Apple. "I knew it was related to the iPod, but not what the job was." Others do know but won't say, a realization that hits the newbies on their first day of work at new-employee orientation.